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Sunday, 20 July 2014

MORE CONTROVERSIES LIKE NLB THE BETTER

We are the majority says people who are against the proliferation of homosexuality in Singapore, and with that majority they are out on a campaign to wipe Singapore clean of its sin and immorality. They are not stopping at just having got rid of the penguins and swans out of the children's corner, but to purge Singapore of its impurities and traits of evil found in every corner of society. They reminded me of the "red guards" in China during the Cultural Revolution.

It is exciting to see Singaporeans who are so used to keeping their pent up unhappiness to themselves suddenly liberated to a new dimension where they are able to excercised some form of authority or power in telling the authorities what to do. That was exactly how the whole NLB saga got started.

While the climate of people-government relations has changed, fundamentals of society are largely not. Third and fourth generation Singaporeans are still way behind the kind of liberalism practiced in the western nations even though they may show some form of compromising between the two.

Hence it may still be too early to divide Singapore or Singaporeans into camps of conservatives or liberals.

For both government and people, it is perfectly opportune time to start finding a new conjunct. In the past when the people prefers to keep silent, the government can only make intelligent guesses through its machinery of data collection. Not that the voices now are at all that accurate than the old methods, it offers a test element against its old methods. The current environment also allows the government to adjust itself, and start reviewing and redefining its processes as continuously its long held principles are being challenged.

Some academics argued that the government will lose more votes than it will gain navigating through the transition and transformation. That's no more than just a person's opinion. Voting decisions are, more often than not made within the final moments.

In this new environment, the government no longer needs to second guess what unhappy people are talking in their private, and to be caught by surprised when the opposition knew everything that they didn't know about during hustlings. They probably may even have regretted why they had not allowed themselves to be criticized openly earlier. Nine days is too short to react, and I believed the government would be more than happy to see more controversies such as the NLB saga emerged before 2016.

The people too is now facing a government which they are not quite familiar with. Some may accuse the government of flip flopping from time to time in the way they do things, the very same term government parliamentarians accused the opposition party of. Flip flopping is neither good nor bad in itself, and really depending what the flip flopping is for.

Eventually I believe the people will recognized the government as no more the same guardian gods that stand guard at the doorway for centuries without changing.

The balance and equations will change with social behavior. The people may no longer need to align with the opposition to have their voices heard, even as the government gets more engaged to voices of unhappiness.

As for now, the rearrangement of dynamics looks healthy for both the government and people.